Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Adobe Wants Me to Trust My Passwords to Intel, and Google Agrees

I'm thinking I want to amuse myself by looking at Google Translate's results for a test question.

I go to Google Translate, and Google warns me that Adobe Flash is old and says some function has been blocked.

Now it still shows me their translation results, which aren't too bad this time.

Anyway, I go to Adobe's websitse to check on updates.

Adobe wants me to install Intel's True Key password manager when I download the new update.

It's not just an option, it's a recommended option. The checkbox is checked: "Yes! I will install True Key by Intel Security and resolve my password handling burdens." (my translation from Japanese). I close the page and open it again and it's still there and still checked by default. Any way I come to that page, it's still checked by default.

Still checked by default.

Adobe really wants me to trust Intel with my passwords.

(The Japanese text, if you are interested, is 「はい、True Key by Intel セキュリティをインストールして、パスワード管理の負担を解除します。」 )

If I'm not paying attention when I download the update, I'm going to install True Key and effectively give Intel's software all control over my passwords.

Oh, and, by the way, every effort I make to get that page to display in English is mutely refused.

I show the front page in English and come here and it's still Japanese.

I remove "jp" from the URL and it rewrites the URL and puts it back in for me.

I explicitly type "en" on top of "jp" in the URL and it rewrites that, as well. Okay, okay, okay, language vs. country.

So I type "us" over the "jp" and try that. But that "Page Does Not Exist". (Ergo, they think that, if the country is not specified, it must implicitly be the US -- by defaults built into the website design. Typical US-centric snobs. ;-/)

Good thing I'm fluent in Japanese.

Oh, hey, I'm fluent in Japanese. I really don't need AdobeFlashy web applications to amuse me with their really bad translations. (Erm, well, this time it wasn't so bad. Bad, but not that bad. And it translates for me anyway, so I have no idea why Google thinks I need Flash for that page. Well, probably, Flash smooths out the event handling with images or something equally inane and arcane. As if Javascript/Ecmascript events are not enough by themselves.)

It's not enough for Adobe to push McAfee Malware software on me, even though the school has Virus Buster licensed and installed on this computer already.

Draw your own conclusions.

But I don't appreciate the hard sell, just so they can pretend to be trying to overcome the security nightmare that is Adobe Flash.

(Fix Flash, Adobe, if you know how. If you don't know how, hire people who do. No, I'm not interested.)